WI task force 8 and 12 with the carriers were in PH on Dec 7? US loses the carriers and then Saratoga is sunk by a sub. USA also loses more ships playing defence. The public might want peace soon. Midterms in 42 could be a bloodbath for FDR
Oh, we've had multiple threads on just that scenario - I mean, it's not impossible that Yamamoto picks a weekend where
Lexington and
Enterprise are both at Pearl.
1) But the U.S. Navy had seven fleet carriers in December 1941. Even if you sink three of them in the opening weeks - which is very unlikely, but not impossible - the U.S. could still redeploy the remaining four (
Wasp, Yorktown, Hornet, Ranger+) to EastPac quickly, and given the higher aircraft complement most of them had relative to Japanese fleet carriers, that would actually be a reasonable match for the full Kido Butai. And since
Lexington and
Enterprise would have sunk in the shallow waters of Pearl, you'd likely have a pretty decent chance of raising and repairing them, like the USN did with
California and
West Virginia (admittedly, after extensive time and work - you probably have to wait until 1943 to get either of them back in operation). Additionally, in the short term there is *also* the live probability that one or more British
Illustrious class carriers in the Indian Ocean get redeployed to the South Pacific to work alongside Nimitz's carriers - this was something Admiral King had already proposed in May 1942 of our time, and which actually *did* happen with HMS
Victorious in early 1943.
2) But meanwhile, the United States under the modified Two Ocean Navy Act has 30 - note that, 30!* -
Essex class carriers being built under a crash program, with the first reaching commission at the end of 1942; up to 100 (!) escort carriers being built; and an emergency conversion program for
Cleveland class cruisers into light carriers, which in OTL ended up delivering 9
Independence class CVL's to the Pacific in 1943 but could on my calculations have delivered an additional 6 more in 1943 if necessary. And that doesn't count all the
other construction of surface ships (starting with ten(!) fast battleships and up to 22 heavy cruisers) and aircraft. The United States can count on a freaking
tidal wave of new construction hitting the Pacific in 1943-44, and everyone from Franklin Roosevelt on down knows it full well.
3) Meanwhile, Japan has
zero realistic capability to take Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, or India, or for that matter even New Caledonia (which had 22,000 troops in place by spring 1942, and 30,000 by August) or Samoa. Its realistic outer defense perimeter was pretty close to what they actually ended up with. And again, American leadership understood this, too.
The worst case scenario for the U.S. here is just that you probably butterfly away WATCHTOWER and most of the Solomons Campaign, at least through mid-1943; the U.S. just stands largely on defense in the Pacific until the tidal wave arrives.
4) So that's what the
leadership knows and assumes. So we're left with American popular opinion. Do we really think that the U.S. public would be ready to cry uncle because they lose a few more capital ships early on?
Everything we know about the mood of the public in 1941 and early 1942 suggests it would only make them
more enraged, Republicans and Democrats alike. (Look at what happened when word got out that the USS
Houston was sunk; within days, over 1,000 "Houston Volunteers" had shown up and been accepted at the recruiting offices in Houston, TX to replace the lost crew. That's the mindset at work in those days.) This was something even Yamamoto, who had lived and studied in the U.S. for several years, fully appreciated, which is why he made his famous quip that Japan would have to dictate terms from the White House - which was of course a manifest impossibility.
Even if the Republicans took the House back in 1942, this wouldn't change; in fact, it would only increase pressure on the administration to smash the Japanese hard. Forexample, the House Republican leader in 1942 was Rep. Joseph W. Martin Jr.. An avowed anti-internationalist before the war, he immediately transformed into a warhawk on December 7, 1941; all of his energies as Speaker would be pushed into pursuing the war against Japan, not terminating it. As he said after Pearl Harbor, " There is no politics here. There is only one party when it comes to the integrity and honor of this country.”
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+
It's true that this means losing Ranger for Operation TORCH, but this could easily be compensated for by redeploying a British fleet carrier.
* In our timeline, 6 of those 30 would later be cancelled in 1944-45, because they proved to be unnecessary; but in a timeline where the US loses more fleet carriers up front, that's additional construction the USN could keep in the pipeline if it wanted to.